What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you? You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure. You adulterers! Don’t you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again: If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God. Do you think the Scriptures have no meaning? They say that God is passionate that the spirit he has placed within us should be faithful to him. And he gives grace generously. As the Scriptures say, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come close to God, and God will come close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world. Let there be tears for what you have done. Let there be sorrow and deep grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter, and gloom instead of joy. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up in honor. James 4:1-10
On a pleasant
Sunday afternoon drive my bride and I passed an old church on a country
road. We stopped to admire the
setting. As a church-aholic
I couldn’t resist trying the door. To my
shock, there is at least one unlocked door in 2020.
We went
inside, and Elizabeth played the piano while I took some pictures, one of which
was the mourner’s bench in the front…the place where those who
were under deep conviction for their sins, and, declaring their repentance,
would sit, until examination of their lives by church elders was deemed
sufficient and successful to formally join, or rejoin the congregation. As I examined the bench where such examinations
were held, I noticed what may be wrong with faith in America…spider webs on the
repentance bench. It seems we have (as
one writer long ago observed) lost the ability to blush at our sins.
Most
everyone in America must be wondering, what in the world has happened? Why the hostilities, the wars, the anger; why
this road rage existence we live? Many have a ready answer, and much of it solves
nothing. Perhaps the reason is because we
are chasing the ghost of fond memories; that which is long past and was never
so. By that I refer to longing
for better days, when people were good to each other, and life was
young and beautiful. We want to know why
this is no longer so, and how can we get it back.
The illusory
image of what President George H.W. Bush called a kinder, gentler nation,
is a rose-colored glasses version of reality.
America has ever and only been great, or kind,
or gentle in its nobler moments of sacrificing its own
comfort and self-aggrandizing for the sake of other’s liberty and fair treatment. The moment the motive shifts to self
is the beginning of the descent into death of our faith and honor.
The Apostle,
James says we have quarrels and fights ongoing because
of the evil desires at war within. The
antidote for such attitudes and lifestyles, says the half-brother of Jesus, is
to run to the mourner’s bench, humble ourselves before God, let the tears flow
over our sins, and trust Him for forgiveness…and then DO live the way Scripture
teaches.
The kinder,
gentler moments and memories we have of so-called better days are
no more than the aftermath of the several Great Awakenings[1] in America. These were times of flaming pulpits, and
revival, that of the kind of holiness which can only be God-inspired. During, and for a short period after, such
times good will and better behavior were the norm. But, like combing your hair will only last so
long as you keep it out of the wind, reforms without discipleship will soon fade
like a morning mist. As the Proverb
writer has it, like a dog returns to its vomit, so sinners return to what we
want. And a human being in revolt to the
Spirit of God repeats the process without fail.
Short
version: unless people walk in the
Spirit, they will live in the flesh. And
if there are, as people are wont to say, dead churches in our
land, it is only because faith, and the will to live as people of
faith, died first.
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today. Have a blessed day!
Title image Russell Brownworth (own work) ∞ Unless
noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©
For other posts on James 4 see: God's Way --- My Way and
Devilitis and the Piano and
Shrewd
and Harmless
